BS: Where would you be without???????

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rowan
Date: 28 Aug 08 - 05:49 PM

Where would I be without???????

By my count that's one question for every day of the week; without them I'd be pig ignorant and just regurgitating others' received wisdom. Asking questions has undoubtedly got me into quite a few scrapes but it's something I'm glad to have experienced. I rarely go anywhere without a question lurking somewhere.

Ford Prefect always took a towel with him but I reckon an enquiring mind is at least as good.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Aug 08 - 12:45 PM

And where would I be?

Probably drinking beer after working all day in a factory and looking forward to the duck hunting season. Or, more likely, just drinking beer and living off a military pension. Or, even more likely, dead.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Aug 08 - 01:57 AM

olddude...you can always eat them, too!

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 02:51 PM

Unable to ask a question.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: M.Ted
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 11:45 AM

And if you aren't where you think you are, you're likely wrong about how you got there, too.
'

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 11:24 AM

I've no idea where I'd be.

The thing is - life is such an uncertain business - you can never really be sure that you are, where you think you are.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: maire-aine
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 10:40 AM

One big boost in my life came from a state-wide college tuition grant program, that was available in the late 1960s & early 1970s. It was based on financial need (my father had died when I was 14 and my mother was making minimum wage), and you only needed to maintain a passing grade-point-average. It allowed me to attend a private Jesuit university for 4 years, which I could never have managed otherwise. Unfortunately, that program fell victim to budget cuts some years ago.

So, I did not have a failed marriage, nor did I have to raise children in a single-parent household making minimum wage. I've been very fortunate.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: kendall
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 10:37 AM

I quit dealing with the VA.One screwup after another.And that was before the Bush cut backs!

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 09:36 AM

Well, a sense of finding the humorous in the ridiculous and silly has helped a lot too. So has a familial tradition of righteous anger (e.g., my brother talking to a VA rep who in a whining, grating, voice told him that they had FINALLY found the money for his GI Bill in an emergency fund in Texas, money that would repay the bank loans bro had to take so he could go back to college: "I don't give a f**k WHERE the hell you found it!")

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: jacqui.c
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 07:16 AM

Kendall here.

A deep sense of longing for something better, and a sense of humor to help me over the disappointment when I didn't get what I wanted.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Micca
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 06:49 AM

Liz, Not to mention your sidetrips into writing very enjoyable songs, and also your secondary career as freelance "Les Barker scarer and Bat-stunner extraordinare" BTW I heard someone at the week-end say "What an Unusual laugh" and that was after only a 2-3 second burst!!!of the famous Squeak!!

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 06:02 AM

Mrs Hewitt, my teacher in the second junior year (about Year 5 now) when I was 8, in 1973. She was the one who told me I made more noise in the playground than I did in class and that I should sing up louder.

Without that I wouldn't have joined the church choirs I've been in, I wouldn't have dared sing in front of people and I wouldn't have had my first solo part at age 11, nor got to fulfil one of my 'Life (or Bucket) List' desires - to sing in St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square.

Or discover folk music and consequently, this place.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Jeanie
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 04:39 AM

I agree with Little Hawk. It's impossible to say where any of us would be without the trail of events, encounters and choices made by us or imposed upon us all through our lives. Years ago, when I was bewailing something that had not happened, that I had been wanting to happen, a friend said to me: "You never know what you have been saved from" - and she's right.

Carpe diem - seize the day. Life and the living of it keeps teaching that, day by day. There have been times when I have been awake to opportunities and have taken them, and times when I haven't and could afterwards have kicked myself. The great thing, though, is that with another day comes another opportunity to seize it.

I don't know if anyone else has found this in their life, but opportunities that I didn't seize, or hoped-for or planned-for things that events and circumstances conspired against happening at a particular time sometimes have the uncanny knack of surprisingly popping up over the horizon maybe decades later. Then, and only then, do I fully realize that way back then just wasn't the right time or the right place, but my instinct for yearning for them was correct.

I do think that some things in life may be more random because they actually make less difference to the progress of the human soul, but others, which the individual soul needs and craves to happen, in order to progress, just *have* to occur - in the soul's timing, and not the mind's timing.

Sorry to be so philsophical in my answer, but it's something that, as I've got older and gone through the many twists, turns and apparent "chance" circumstances of life, I do think about quite a bit.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Aug 08 - 03:42 AM

Divorce:

A nervous jibbering wreck, and not a trace of red anywhere.

doesn't bear thinking about..........

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: maeve
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 11:39 PM

Without certain friends here and the grace of God I'd still be silent. With them I'm writing and singing after a very long, painful hiatus.

Thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: ClaireBear
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 10:58 PM

A sense of humor.

Not sayin' nuthin' else.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 10:19 PM

Without the joy of a David Hasselhoff stupid comment, one like:
"It's as American as the Olympics"

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 09:50 PM

Without my kids - I'd be in the South Pacific. Thankfully, they've provided me with an even better option.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 09:35 PM

Okay...some good teachers at all levels of education, a sense of honor instilled in me by my mother, my mother (who as a widow raised four kids, educated them through grad school, saw all of the boys married, and then tried some college courses herself and did it all on Social Security and VA survivor's payments), several female relatives who could have each wrassled a grizzly with one hand while changing a baby with the other, a couple of children's librarians who introduced me to reading for the sheer hell of it, the mathematician/librarian/lawyer/cancer survivor/quilter I married, and a whole lot of other people.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Escapee
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 09:13 PM

A priest of my parent's generation, an old friend of my father's family, fronted me tuition money when my program at work was only for reimbursement, officiated at my wedding, helped me get my job and loaned me money to get a house. He pretty much became my family after my parents died. Where would I be without????? I'd be uneducated, unemployed, single and living under a bridge. I'm not sure whether he was a saint or an angel but he was on the spot when a lot of people needed help.
Fair winds,
SKP

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Charley Noble
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 08:28 PM

If it wasn't for amoebic dysentery my Draft Board would have succeeded in drafting me out of the Peace Corps in 1967. I believe they had intentions of sending me to fight in Vietnam. Too bad!

Thank you, amoebas!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Ebbie
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 07:48 PM

And Jello, right?

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: olddude
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 07:23 PM

The Hot Dog, The food of the gods, the almighty hot dog got me here

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 07:03 PM

So talk about it... don't shirk... get on with it......

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 06:50 PM

What brought me to where I am?????????

That's a question with a very, very, long answer. Too long for a thread. Let's go get a beer or a keg and talk about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 06:48 PM

It's really hard to say where I would be without...?

Somewhere, definitely, but where is a mystery to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 06:30 PM

Bill D... I ask it because I am genuinely interested in what people have been through to make them what they are.... I have been through much... one way and another...... but it is always good to find other peoples perspectives.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Rapparee
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 06:20 PM

Stayin' alive, stayin' alive....

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Dead Horse
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 06:19 PM

If it wasnt for the hole in my arse, I'd be as full of shit as a goddam politician.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Sorcha
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 05:40 PM

A can opener? A potato peeler? A HOUSE?

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 05:20 PM

"It would be good to know!!!!!!! "

ummm,,,why? and is it MORE good to know with 7 exclamation points?

And why do folks who ask these kind of questions seldom begin with THEIR version so we have an example?

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Lox
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 05:18 PM

As donuel has already laid claim to the common denominator I'll add Family and friends.

Subject: RE: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Donuel
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 05:14 PM

ah love sweet luv.

Subject: BS: Where would you be without???????
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 26 Aug 08 - 05:10 PM

So where would you be without...... whatever has brought you to the point you are at in life???    Oh and what brought you to where you are????It would be good to know!!!!!!!